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Non-monotonic response and Klein-Gordon physics in gapless-to-gapped quantum quenches of one-dimensional free fermionic systems

S. Porta, Filippo Maria Gambetta, Niccolò Traverso Ziani, Maura Sassetti, Fabio Cavaliere

Published Aug 30, 2017• 0 citations
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Abstract

The properties of prototypical examples of one-dimensional fermionic systems undergoing a sudden quantum quench from a gapless state to a (partially) gapped state are analyzed. By means of a Generalized Gibbs Ensemble analysis or by numerical solutions in the interacting cases, we observe an anomalous, non-monotonic response of steady state correlation functions as a function of the strength of the mechanism opening the gap. In order to interpret this result, we calculate the full dynamical evolution of these correlation functions, which shows a freezing of the propagation of the quench information (light cone) for large quenches. We argue that this freezing is responsible for the non-monotonous behaviour of observables. In continuum non-interacting models, this freezing can be traced back to a Klein-Gordon equation in the presence of a source term. We conclude by arguing in favour of the robustness of the phenomenon in the cases of non-sudden quenches and higher dimensionality.

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The properties of prototypical examples of one-dimensional fermionic systems undergoing a sudden quantum quench from a gapless state to a (partially) gapped state are analyzed. By means of a Generalized Gibbs Ensemble analysis or by numerical solutions in the interacting cases, we observe an anomalous, non-monotonic response of steady state correlation functions as a function of the strength of the mechanism opening the gap. In order to interpret this result, we calculate the full dynamical evolution of these correlation functions, which shows a freezing of the propagation of the quench information (light cone) for large quenches. We argue that this freezing is responsible for the non-monotonous behaviour of observables. In continuum non-interacting models, this freezing can be traced back to a Klein-Gordon equation in the presence of a source term. We conclude by arguing in favour of the robustness of the phenomenon in the cases of non-sudden quenches and higher dimensionality.
The properties of prototypical examples of one-dimensional fermionic systems undergoing a sudden quantum quench from a gapless state to a (partially) gapped state are analyzed. By means of a generalized Gibbs ensemble analysis or by numerical solutions in the interacting cases, we observe an anomalous, nonmonotonic response of steady-state correlation functions as a function of the strength of the mechanism opening the gap. In order to interpret this result, we calculate the full dynamical evolution of these correlation functions, which shows a freezing of the propagation of the quench information (light cone) for large quenches. We argue that this freezing is responsible for the nonmonotonous behavior of observables. In continuum noninteracting models, this freezing can be traced back to a Klein-Gordon equation in the presence of a source term. We conclude by arguing in favor of the robustness of the phenomenon in the cases of nonsudden quenches and higher dimensionality.
One of the fundamental principles of statistical physics is that only partial information about a system's state is required for its macroscopic description. This is not only true for thermal ensembles, but also for the unconventional ensemble, known as Generalized Gibbs Ensemble (GGE), that is expected to describe the relaxation of integrable systems after a quantum quench. By analytically studying the quench dynamics in a prototypical one-dimensional critical model, the massless free bosonic field theory, we find evidence of a novel type of equilibration characterized by the preservation of an enormous amount of memory of the initial state that is accessible by local measurements. In particular, we show that the equilibration retains memory of non-Gaussian initial correlations, in contrast to the case of massive free evolution which erases all such memory. The GGE in its standard form, being a Gaussian ensemble, fails to predict correctly the equilibrium values of local observables, unless the initial state is Gaussian itself. Our findings show that the equilibration of a broad class of quenches whose evolution is described by Luttinger liquid theory with an initial state that is non-Gaussian in terms of the bosonic field, is not correctly captured by the corresponding bosonic GGE, raising doubts about the validity of the latter in general one-dimensional gapless integrable systems such as the Lieb-Liniger model. We also propose that the same experiment by which the GGE was recently observed [Langen et al., Science 348 (2015) 207-211] can also be used to observe its failure, simply by starting from a non-Gaussian initial state.
We investigate generalized thermalization in an isolated free fermionic chain evolving from an out of equilibrium initial state through a sudden quench. We consider the quench where a fermionic chain is broken into two disjoint chains. We focus on the evolution of the local observables namely, occupation number, nearest neighbor hopping, information sharing and out-of-time-order correlations after the quench and study the relaxation of the observable, leading to generalized Gibbs ensemble for the system in the thermodynamic limit though it has been argued that noninteracting or free fermionic models in general do not relax to the generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE). We obtain the light cone formed by the evolution of the observables along the fermionic lattice chain due to the sudden quench which abides by the Lieb-Robinson bound in quantum systems. We also analytically study a simpler model which captures the essential features of the system. Our analysis strongly suggest that the internal interactions within the system do not remain of much importance once the quench is sufficiently strong.
We study a quantum quench in a one-dimensional spinless fermion model (equivalent to the XXZ spin chain), where a magnetic flux is suddenly switched off. This quench is equivalent to imposing a pulse of electric field and therefore generates an initial particle current. This current is not a conserved quantity in the presence of a lattice and interactions, and we investigate numerically its time evolution after the quench, using the infinite time-evolving block decimation method. For repulsive interactions or large initial flux, we find oscillations that are governed by excitations deep inside the Fermi sea. At long times we observe that the current remains nonvanishing in the gapless cases, whereas it decays to zero in the gapped cases. Although the linear response theory (valid for a weak flux) predicts the same long-time limit of the current for repulsive and attractive interactions (relation with the zero-temperature Drude weight), larger nonlinearities are observed in the case of repulsive interactions compared with that of the attractive case.
With regard to the thermalization problem in isolated quantum systems, we investigate the dynamics following a quantum quench of the sine-Gordon model (sGM) in the Luther–Emery and the semiclassical limits. We consider the quench from the gapped to the gapless phase, as well as the reverse one. By obtaining analytic expressions for the one- and two-point correlation functions of the order parameter operator at zero-temperature, the manifestations of integrability in the absence of thermalization in the sGM are studied. It is shown that correlations in the long-time regime after the quench are well described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble. We also consider the case where the system is initially in contact with a reservoir at finite temperature. The possible relevance of our results to current and future experiments with ultracold atomic systems is also considered.
We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of the Luttinger model after suddenly turning on and off the bare Coulomb interaction between the fermions. We analyze several correlation functions such as the one particle density matrix and vertex correlations, its finite time dynamics, and the stationary state limit. Correlations exhibit a nonlinear light-cone effect: The spreading of the initial signal accelerates as a consequence of the quantum nature of the excitations, whose peculiar dispersion of plasmonic type in one dimension (1D) gives rise to a logarithmic divergence in the group velocity at q=0q=0q=0. In addition, we show that both the static and dynamic stationary state correlations can be reproduced with a simple generalized Gibbs ensemble despite the long-range character of the interactions which precludes the application of the Lieb-Robinson bounds. We propose a suitable experimental setup in which these effect can be observed based on ultracold ions loaded on linear traps.